


The Werewolf in the Ministry

by ElizaHiggs



Series: The Professor [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, F/M, First Meetings, POA Remus/Tonks, slightly AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-17 13:46:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8146270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElizaHiggs/pseuds/ElizaHiggs
Summary: Auror Cadet Tonks assists on a routine security interview





	

**Author's Note:**

> Happy debate night, everybody.
> 
> I hadn't intended for this to be a series, but if you like this slightly-AU POA headcanon, let me know.

"Dammit, Mad-Eye," she mutters. Her fingers drum absentmindedly on the little cubicle desk, but surface is padded heavily with reports and newsprint and suspect profiles, and the sound is dissatisfyingly muted. She stifles a sigh and makes a halfhearted effort to shuffle the papers into vague piles instead.

_The new DADA professor is a werewolf._

She may be, she thinks, the only person in Magical Law Enforcement who knows. And it's not Mad-Eye she's damning, exactly, but the growing realization that being Mad-Eye Moody's protegee will mean keeping more and more of Albus Dumbledore's secrets. 

The restless fingers find what they're looking for--a copy of _The Prophet_ , the same issue Mad-Eye had shown her, with the small headshot and brief bio of one Remus Lupin, 33, newly appointed Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. 

It's impossible to say why the picture has lurked in the corner of her attention for weeks. Not the man, surely--greying and lined and utterly unremarkable. It's not that she's particularly concerned, either; she trusts Mad-Eye's judgment and has no intention of betraying his confidence. Nor does she have any particular desire to out the man in the photograph, who looks like he could do with a good meal and could probably use the job. 

And yet she can't bring herself to discard the newspaper article and just forget the damned affair; anymore than she can understand her need to commune with the formal little portrait of the man gazing steadily at his photographer, quietly composed and quite nearly defiant.

"Tonks."

She jumps and places the flat of her hand down on the paper, obscuring the article, as if she'd just been caught doing something embarrassing, and not casually perusing last month's newspaper (as one does). 

It's Kingsley. "Are you ready?" he asks, one dark eyebrow raised. He knows her well enough to find her behavior surprising; she's not easily startled. Constant vigilance, and all. 

"Yes--yes," she says, reshuffling the papers and re-covering the man's face.  

She follows Kingsley out of the office and towards the visitor's entrance, where they are scheduled to meet their engagement for a security clearance interview. They're routine: new Healers at St. Mungo's, appointments to the Department of Mysteries, and so forth. They're dull: often handled by Auror Cadets alone. She's been feeling vaguely annoyed that Kingsley seems to think she still requires supervision, and she's still mulling and musing over on the walk to the Visitor's Entrance, and so she's not expecting it at all when he's there.  

She almost overlooks him, sat off to one side at a bench, apparently engrossed in this morning's paper. He's a thin man, and the slight build and shabby, nondescript appearance render him an easy miss. 

But then Kingsley stops, and the man looks up, and recognition shoots through her like a jinx. For a second, his eyes meet hers, and he looks more like the young man in Mad-Eye's photograph than he does the weary one from the newspaper bio. For another second, she would swear he recognizes her too: his eyes widen slightly as if in shock, and his lips part in confusion. She hopes that her own surprise is not written as boldly across her face. But then his attention refocuses on Kingsley, and the moment dissolves. 

The badge pinned to the front of his threadbare robes reads simply: _Remus J. Lupin_ , _visitor -_ not _Remus J. Lupin, lyncanthrope._ He's unregistered, then. 

"Remus," Kingsley says, with a rare warmth in his voice, and Tonks wonders suddenly how much her supervisor knows.

The man stands and reaches out to shake Kingsley's hand. "How are you, old friend?" he returns in a low, raspy voice, and suddenly she understands why she is there: Kingsley cannot conduct the security interview unaccompanied if he knows the appointee. She is the second set of Ministry eyes.

"This is Auror Cadet Tonks," Kingsley says, gesturing politely towards her with an open hand. She reaches out her own hand to shake the man's, and as he greets with her with a low  _hullo_ she cannot quite meet his eyes. His voice is somehow so unexpected, so complex. Rough. Melodic. Like water rushing over rocks.

"If you'll follow us, Remus," Kingsley continues, gesturing once again back down the hall, "we can use my office for our interview."

_Interview._ They are interviewing this man for the professorship appointment. And she knows his secret. If she says nothing, then he will be off to Hogwarts come September 1, with hundreds of young schoolchildren, with whom he will be in dangerous proximity once a month. If she is silent, then she is complicit. 

Kingsley. Kingsley would expect her to disclose anything so crucial. But she can't betray Mad-Eye's trust. She can't--doesn't _want_ to--betray this ill-looking man, who must assume they know nothing.

She could recuse herself--feign illness and send another Cadet to Kingsley's office. She has her mouth open, ready to claim a headache, but then Kingsley puts his hand on her back and steers her quite firmly into the room, shuts them in. She closes her mouth. 

"Now then, Remus," Kingsley offers the man a chair across from his desk, much larger, and much less cluttered, than her own. She seats herself in a chair a bit apart from the two men and pulls parchment and a quill from her bag, wills her face to remain neutral. 

"Thanks for sending the paperwork along in advance," Kingsley continues, gathering parchment from his desk. "Everything seems to be in order." He signs along the bottom of the last page, and passes the leaves to her for her co-signature.

She flips through the pages numbly. His N.E.W.T. qualifications are impressive, but as she'd anticipated, there's not much by way of an employment history: some research assistance, some writing, and long, unexplained gaps in between. She pauses, blankly contemplating the employment record, and thinks: these are not clues that would slide past Kingsley. He's too good of an Auror, too observant. And he has some sort of history with this man. The only rational conclusion she can draw is that Kingsley _knows_ and that, somehow, he must realize that she knows too.

_Dammit,_ Mad-Eye.

She can feel his eyes on her, watching her read his life bleakly recorded in ink and parchment, but when she lets the pages fall back together and looks up, he glances back to Kingsley, who is saying something about Hogwarts.

"Dumbledore communicated your concerns. If Snape is making the potion, I personally don't think you need to worry about anything going wrong, but if you still prefer to have a backup solution, we--that is to say, Tonks and I--are prepared to keep Ministry interest of any increased activity at the Shrieking Shack at bay."

_At the - ?_

He goes stiff. She understands as clearly as if he'd spoken that he's afraid to look at her.

"Tonks knows, Remus," Kingsley says in a low voice, and he turns slowly from Kingsley to her, looks her fully, unabashedly in the face. The unease is gone, but his face is still incredibly guarded.

"And you are comfortable with this?" he asks calmly. 

_Still reeling from the shock of being utterly blindsided by Mad-Eye and Kingsley, actually._

"Tonks is Mad-Eye's protegee, Remus, a detail I take it he neglected to communicate to Dumbledore," Kingsley responds for her, frowning slightly. "She can be trusted."  

But the man is still looking at her, and the vacuum left by her silence in suddenly unbearable.

"As long as you can be confident that the safety of the students won't be--er--in question," she says lamely.

"I assure you, that is my highest priority," he says softly. He holds her gaze, and for a second he looks just like the defiant man in the photograph, face hard and eyes blazing, and she realizes with a jolt that it's those eyes--those eyes that have haunted her subconscious for weeks, and she's surprised by the sudden strength of her urge to reassure him that she will not betray him. 

"Remus has been dealing with transformations for twenty years, Tonks; he knows the precautions that need be taken," Kingsley says with a confidence bordering on a disinterest that suggests he is unaware of whatever it is that is passing between his friends. 

"Nearer thirty," he dissents quietly, and she starts. 

_Nearly thirty years of transformations?_ But then...he must have been such a very small child when he was bitten...and he would have attended Hogwarts as a teenaged werewolf--without the benefit of Wolfsbane. Dumbledore's trust in the man suddenly has a foundation. As does the steel behind the man's eyes. 

She takes a deep breath and meets those eyes. "Mad-Eye trusts you," she says simply. "And so do I."


End file.
